


Firetinder

by ThatDamnKennedyKid



Series: The Winged Jedi [22]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003) - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Wingfic, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-05
Updated: 2019-04-05
Packaged: 2019-11-18 22:37:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18127391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatDamnKennedyKid/pseuds/ThatDamnKennedyKid
Summary: On their long-unused personal channel, Obi-Wan receives a message from Anakin.





	Firetinder

Obi-Wan blinked awake to the dead of night and beeping from her communicator. It was flashing yellow - the colour of a message, not a transmission or a holocall. 

She shimmied Cody onto one side of her chest to she could reach it, squinting at the light, trying to decipher the letters. It took her a moment to realize it came from her old private channel with Anakin, based out of the Temple. They'd stopped using it once he grew out of the Padawan phase, but they'd still kept it for little reminders and notifications about meetings. 

_I need to speak with you. Neutral location - the Monastery on Av'ale._

* * *

She landed gently, her wings folding up behind her gingerly as she approached the decrepit monastery. There had been no one to tend it in twenty long years, and the foliage had overtaken it once more. 

"I had a dream of this place."

She turned slightly, watching Anakin emerge from the shadows. He looked thoughtful, less haunted than he had on Coruscant. Even the sick yellow in his eyes was dimmed. 

"It was beautiful back then. One of the most serene places I'd ever been. I was jealous of Ghost Company, getting to stay behind with you."

"I wish things had turned out differently." She admitted.  "An old Jedi curse Qui-Gon taught me was  _May you live in interesting times._ I hadn't thought much about that before the war. I find it fitting now."

"The Emperor thinks I've been compromised. I'm sure you noticed the shift in leadership."

"I did."

"And maybe I am." He conceded. "What I dreamt of . . . I want it so badly. I want it all back, and I want that future."

"Then take it."

He glanced over at her.

"Take what you want. What you need."

"Is it really that simple?"

"It can be." She shuffled her feathers. "Anakin, why the hesitation now? All your life, you saw something and went after it. You spotted Qui-Gon and won your freedom. As my Padawan, you were always a force all your own. You married a Senator expressly against the Code and in defiance of her position. Why would getting what you want now be any different?"

He considered her for a long moment, looking over all of her and lingering on her obi. "I don't know. It feels different."

"Telling you who you are and what you should be has always been a recipe for disaster." She chuckled, tilting her head at him. "Maybe it's time the Emperor learned what that means."

"Master, did you just call me a disaster?"

"You are." She laughed, warm and beautiful and shining. "You're a destructive storm that tears away all the old and the unfit to leave room for the new to grow. It's not a bad thing - it's just who you are."

He wandered over to the overgrown gardens, stroking along the leaves. "You make everything sound so easy."

"I thought you liked being able to accomplish the difficult and impossible." She wandered towards the gardens. "Come, walk with me."

He followed on instinct, barely aware he was moving. "You know I have dreams."

"Prophetic ones, yes." She glanced at him. "Have you had more?"

"I have. I had one last night, and another today." He went to touch her wings, then hesitated. The abrupt reality check that he was a Sith, she a Jedi, and that she would very reasonably not want him to touch her hurt deep in his soul. 

She caught his motion, however, and lowered her wings from their resting position on her back. They were off her body now, giving him a view of the slope of her back. Scarring peered out from under her robes, white lines and the beginning of jagged black burns. 

"I've only seen you disrobed a couple of times as a Padawan." He brushed his fingers along the copper pinions. "Where do those scars come from?"

She sighed heavily. "I feel, before I tell you, that I must explain why I dodged telling you."

He frowned. "Because that's not ominous."

She ignored him. "You past as a slave presented difficult decisions for me, as a master. Most Padawans ahve no history they remember, myself among them, nor that can affect them. You did. When we found you, it wasn't that much after I'd returned to the Jedi, and I was still in pain and embittered."

He frowned. "In pain?"

"Yes." She took a deep breath. "A civil war broke out on a small planet in the Outer Rim, a friend of mind's homeworld. He asked if I could help them. I petitioned the Council to intervene, but they did not. So, I went to go on my own. They threatened to exile me from the Order if I went. I went anyway."

"Oh."

"Yes. I went, and I fought with them for the better part of two years before the slavers came. We were beaten down and tired. It was easy to chain us and drag us away. I put up the most fight, but was still overtaken. I was banded, around my wings and upper chest, my wrists, my ankles and my thighs so I couldn't escape. I was a rare specimen, one they believed they had a buyer for."

"That's awful."

"Apparently, I was too aggressive for the buyer's tastes. My species on the whole is aggressive, I'm not entirely sure why they thought I would be any different. Regardless, with that deal broken, they went me to a mining operation they had, where my regular outbreaks of violence and attempts at escape landed me with the most severe punishments they could muster." She pulled down the collar of her blacks a bit, revealing the latticework of raised and broken skin. "Not the least of which was the collar. I was there for two years. And it was in that time that I acquired all of this damage."

Anakin was at once alight with rage and cold with despair. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"You were a child, fresh from slavery yourself and leaving your mother behind. I couldn't pass my burdens on to you. It was bad enough you'd seen the scarring once it was healed. And when you got old enough, it mattered less to me. I'd let the time go." She looked down at her hands. "I had no desire to give you more reasons to hate the galaxy. I didn't want you to look on me and see suffering. I wanted to be your aspiration, not a burden. Who's to say if I made the right choice."

"I would have wanted to know. I could have related." He frowned, willing back the tears. "Kriffing slavers."

"The pain was unbearable. I didn't want you to have to see that. Especially back then, when they kept breaking open and bleeding."

His heart fell right through the floor. 

She lowered her head. "Maybe if I had told you, you would have felt like you could come to me. Humanize me in your eyes. I could have swayed you away from darkness, enough to keep you from it in the face of my death. We'll never know, I suppose."

"I wish I had of known."

"Would it have changed anything?" She pressed her wing back more firmly against his hand. "Or would it have made me more fragile in your eyes? Would the notion that I could be captured, taken from you, have stuck instead? But talking about these 'ifs' are a pointless endeavour. We're here for what you do next."

He sighed, looking out over the garden. It was overgrown, but still had the air of magic and serenity. The footpaths were still visible, the vines creeping in the cracks of the stone. Butterflies fluttered about in the warmth, along with the occasional bird. 

"What do you think I should do, Master?"

She considered the landscape as well, watching one particular blue butterfly dance in the air. "I think you need to meditate, to feel your feelings and remember the joy you once had."

"No. No riddles. I want to know who you think I should become. The Emperor has already made his want known."

She turned to him, cupping his face in her hands. "I want you to be safe, happy and loved. I want you to be the great man I know you are, the loving husband and excellent teacher. I want you to be bright as a star. I want you back at my side, laughing and fixing things. That's what I want you to be."

He swallowed, trying unsuccessfully to blink back the tears. 

"I want to see you so deeply in love with being alive that darkness never reaches you. I want to see the charm and exuberance that the Council and I beat out of you return, splendid as the day I met you. I want to see you fly, face toward the sun and unafraid of the fall. I just want to see you happy."

He pulled her close, wrapping himself up in her like he was a Padawan again. She held him back, her arms and body as strong and durable as they'd ever been. He gave in to the urge to cry, weeping into her shoulder with abandon. 

In low, soothing tones, she began to sing. It was one of the ancient crèche lullabies, about safety and love. Eternally open doors and safe returns from dangerous lands. 

He felt her, too. The way she opened her signature to him, let him bask in the fierce but gentle flame inside her. Let the darkness burn away. Not all of it would be touched, but it was enough. Enough to make him crave, to have him yearn. 

The darkness inside screeched and clawed painfully forward. 

 _Not now._ A feminine voice echoed in his mind, from somewhere deep inside Obi-Wan, but  _not_ her. A pale hand in a green dress reached out to him and whisked away the shrieks of his demons, soothed the poison in his blood and illuminated his fears. For the first time in a long time, everything felt like it should. 

And yet, there beyond the mystery entity's cocooning embrace, he could feel the Emperor's fury. 


End file.
